The Difference
by Chrysalight
Summary: Kaoru secretly deals with several conflicting emotions, including what he feels about his twin, Hikaru. Only Kyouya knows everything. KaoruxKyouya


"Believe it or not, I know the difference."

"Ah?"

A new arrival, someone who had ever so swiftly and silently slipped through the oak doors of the Host Club's haven.

"Kyouya-senpai?"

Ever so subtly, Kaoru delved his fingers into his hair to brush away his bangs, helping to clear the view from behind him. He found, with mild surprise, that his eyes, only milliseconds after plunging themselves into an invisible chasm of space, now directly focused themselves on the dark, unrelenting gaze of Ohtori Kyouya's.

A pause of polite and graceful silence on the younger host's part served as an interval before the decision came to recognize the newcomer into the room and carry on the conversation.

"What is the difference? And how do you know that there is one?" Kaoru inquired nonchalantly, adjusting his posture on the gold-lined chair with an ease almost feline in definition. Only the slightest hint of curiosity in the other's statement manifested itself through the trace of a smirk he left on his lips.

"I pay a lot of attention to details."

True enough, there was no need for a clipboard and sharply-tipped ballpoint pen, it seemed. As Kyouya observed him with a benign, almost quietly probing disposition, Kaoru couldn't help but strongly feel like one insignificant file in the immortal database Kyouya automatically updated in his brain.

He also felt a little discomfort in being analyzed so shrewdly. A slight arch of his shoulders displayed a fraction of tension to be felt in the grand and colorful recesses of the Third Music Room.

As expected, it was reacted upon. Kyouya smiled slightly as he confidently walked closer to the more refined twin, pressing his eyes ever so gently into the air between them.

"I'm sorry. After all these years, Hitachiin Kaoru, do you still dislike being watched?"

"It makes me feel like an animal," Kaoru admitted, "--no, just a small germ, being observed under a microscope. I don't like feeling as if I was some sort of specimen."

"But is it only Hikaru who loves the attention?"

Kaoru slowly blinked and let his eyes drift away from focus at the mention of his louder, bolder, more outgoing counterpart. It was true that it was mostly Hikaru who stole the limelight, the stage making more room for him during the extravagant performances they'd execute together in front of their enthralled Host Club audience. But how did Kyouya ever come to feel that he sometimes felt left behind and too homogenized in the twins' shared little devil image? How did Kyouya ever come to notice the small traces of frustration--gaze askance, manner a little too distant and polite, jokes only half-implemented, and one too many times spent gazing outside of the Third Music room windows--that spoke of his unhappiness in his shallow, sidetracked character?

"Do you assume that you have a talent for reading minds, senpai? It's another skill you develop to become more sadistic and manipulative everyday, though many of us don't think that's even possible anymore."

Kaoru may not have been as hot-tempered as his brother, but sometimes, even unconsciously, he could be just as smart-mouthed and sarcastic. Especially in circumstances that he was reminded of his own discreet displeasure at being overshadowed.

"It shows how much everyone really knows about me," Kyouya replied coolly. "I'm perceptive not only when it comes to facts, but with emotions. It's something that surprises people, considering another assumption that I'm heartless."

"Aren't you, Kyouya-senpai?"

The smirk that was offered was also quickly returned. "Sometimes, not as much as you think."

"And in that way, you still remain your mysterious, unpredictable self."

"What about you, Kaoru?" Kyouya challenged. "What is it that _you've_ been hiding? You say that you don't like being watched, and yet it's when I see you at the peak of your performance level that I see the differences between you and Hikaru the most."

"No one cares enough to notice, really."

"That's what you think, then?" An almost puzzled look reflected itself against Kyouya's rimless glasses, mirroring him perfectly but at the same time almost perfectly concealing his intentions. "That no one really cares enough to notice?"

"What _is_ the difference, senpai?"

There was now a tinge of spitefulness in Kaoru's voice that reverberated from every wall of the room. It was already unnerving enough to suddenly find himself alone in the presence of the eerie Shadow King, but after the unremitting hits to his core, he now felt provoked.

"What's the real difference, then? Why don't you give me the answers that you keep typing into your stupid psychoanalysis-power calculator? You're pretty quick on the uptake if all you say is that I'm quieter and more subdued than Hikaru. I'm more feminine too, aren't I! Practically the only thing you must think makes me function in this club is my _uwakionna_ appeal when you put me next to my brother!"

Kyouya, taken aback, now stopped in his tracks to absorb the younger host's words. Only his movements seemed to show that at that certain point in time, he'd forgotten his answer, or had just changed his preference and refused to say it.

But in motion too fluid to be comprehensible for perception, he continued his steps towards Kaoru's chair, and in a voice that seemed lined with the ripples of smooth silk and the accents of resolution, he started over with his address, facing the other boy squarely. There was a slight falter in his conviction, meaning that the statement was well-rehearsed, and had something present behind it.

"I wanted to come here to tell you something, Kaoru," he told him. "That I noticed the differences long before you knew I did. I noticed that you were better in Japanese than he was, long before I was assigned to take a look at your course cards. I noticed that you only pretended about your crush on Haruhi when he didn't. I also noticed the small things, Kaoru. You walk different from him, you talk different from him, you part your hair differently, you smile with an offhandedness that he doesn't have.

"You move with finesse, you play yourself so well into character that sometimes even I can't tell who you are on the Host Club stage anymore. You're intelligent, you're perceptive, you're sensitive, and yet you're still afraid to show yourself because you don't think anyone sees anything different than what you have to offer."

A pause for Kyouya to gently let out a free breath, as soft and shaky as a whisper. "That's the difference, Kaoru. It's what makes you different, not just from him, but from everyone else."

There was nothing but an instant of numbness that passed before Kaoru felt himself fall against Kyouya's chest, overwhelmed by what had touched his ears. Was it true that the last person who'd be known to care would actually sort through his thoughts and find that one desire to be known and to be himself, apart from everyone else?

Kyouya himself was stupefied on the inside. A mere discovery of something who matched his own shrewd smarts and cool character on the surface had grown into an intrigue that had fruited into knowledge of something more than just ice-cold words written down on a lifeless report. Rather than being speechless, he chose not to talk. Just to feel the heat rise between them.

Their lips met, starting only with the slightest graze and the exchange of the smallest breaths, and progressing to just another way of desperately finding each other without speaking. The kiss grew from warm to flowing, sinuous hot, intimate and all-encompassing. Kaoru felt himself assert more of his energy in the electric charges of breath he exchanged with Kyouya, ragged and fierce and full of momentum, and Kyouya surrendered himself to searching for more of the answers in the tangles of Kaoru's hair, curling in between his fingers.

Into the inscrutability that lay somewhere inside Kyouya's persona did Kaoru push all of himself, affirming to himself that the difference between him and everyone else was clear, and that it was deeper than all perception.


End file.
